Getting into the groove

Tanya Chua erupts on March 26.

Photo Courtesy of Da Da Arts PromotioN

Acclaimed Singaporean singer/songwriter Tanya Chua (蔡健雅) is all set to show off her groovier side. For the first time in her career, she’s incorporating dance into her performances.

“It’s a very little known fact that I actually started out as a dancer before I became a singer,” Chua told the Taipei Times in a phone interview on Saturday.

Chua begins her second world tour, titled 2011 Tanya Chua Tanya and the Cities Asia Tour (2011蔡健雅Tanya and the Cities 亞洲巡迴演唱會), at Taipei Arena (台北小巨蛋) on March 26. Afterwards, she’ll perform at the Singapore Indoor Stadium before returning to Taiwan to perform at the Taichung City Fulfillment Amphitheater (圓滿戶外劇場) on April 23.

“My music always has that quality of ‘listening to it alone in the living room,’” Chua said. “I will hopefully retain that living room quality and present the more visual aspects of myself.”

A two-time Golden Melody Best Female Singer Award-winner (2006 and 2008), the Mando-pop poetess is acclaimed for creating incisive odes, such as Bottomless Abyss (無底洞) and Night Blindness (夜盲症), and somber metaphors.

Chua will present her new tour as a troubadour who delivers travelogues about life’s romantic encounters.

“The things I have seen and heard in different cities inspired me tremendously,” she said. “Travel is food to my soul. I love the motion of traveling. If I am at home, I will even move furniture around periodically, just to feel a sense of motion.”

Regarded as a modern-day goddess of love equipped with ultra-sensitive antennae with which she hones in on the minutiae of romance, Chua says she has mellowed with age.

“I have seen and gone through enough relationships not to be swayed by romance,” she said. “I fight against being emotional. I don’t want people to know that my feelings are hurt.”

Chua likens her writing process to a volcanic eruption.

“After a period of being very infatuated, overwhelmed or angry, songs will pour out of me,” she said.

While her haunting love songs have earned praise, the songstress has become more celebratory about life on recent albums.